1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an individual authentication system, in particular, one suitably used for authenticating a user when a data processing device is activated.
This application is based on Patent Application No. Hei 11-12452 filed in Japan, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
As computers have become more common, many problems relating to illegal computer usage have increased, such as illegal theft or falsification of data, or pretenses by a third party to be a user. In general measures conventionally implemented for coping with these problems, the user must input a password such as a personal and secret identification number. However, such a password is nothing but personal knowledge; thus, it may be leaked or may be stolen by an illegal user.
In consideration of the above problem, many individual authentication systems using an IC card which stores individual information or the like have been developed, and some of them have been practically used. In such systems using the IC card, generally, a password must be input for accessing the contents of the card; thus, the safety of the system is higher than the individual authentication system using only a password.
However, even in the individual authentication system using the IC card, if both the IC card (a physical object) and the password (individual knowledge) are stolen, the safety is not secured also in this case.
On the other hand, individual biological information data such as fingerprints are different for each person; thus, such information has recently received attention for identifying an individual. However, in this authentication method, the biological information may be changed if the user suffers an injury, or may be misidentified according to the performance of the system.